During unusually heavy rains on Thursday night, San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents rescued 20 individuals from a drainage pipe. They also discovered one person deceased on the beach.

At approximately 11 p.m. on November 28, an on-duty Border Patrol agent found three people attempting to enter the United States illegally near a border drainage pipe, approximately two miles west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry.

The three people informed the agent that there were more people in the drainage pipe. Border Patrol agents heard people yelling for help and quickly pulled one woman to safety. She told them that others were also trapped there. The Border Patrol contacted San Diego Fire & Rescue to help rescue them as the water was beginning to rise due to heavy rainfall.

By way of an access manhole, Border Patrol and Fire & Rescue personnel rescued thirteen individuals. Emergency medical services evaluated all 17 people and seven were transported to a nearby hospital. At around 11:50 p.m., San Diego Fire & Rescue cleared the drainage system of additional subjects and departed the scene.

Later, at approximately 1 a.m., agents heard a woman yelling for help in the exact same drainage pipe. Fire & Rescue came and rescued her, then took her to a nearby hospital. Border Patrol agents also found two subjects near the pipe's exit.

All together, twenty people were rescued. 18 of them were Mexicans – 15 men and three women – one was a Guatemalan man, and one was an unaccompanied Mexican male juvenile. All of them will be processed for illegally entering the United States.

At 2:40 a.m., a Border Patrol agent found an unidentified deceased person on the beach at the mouth of the Tijuana River, which skirts San Ysidro from the south and then flows to the Pacific Ocean through U.S. territory. The agent contacted the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which took custody of the body and will investigate the incident.